22 to me, almost without condescension. It is true he had been drinking. "The place is a hundred years be- h . d h . " h O d (( I ' In t e tImes, e sal. t s a sum- mer home for broken-down waiters." He put one hand on our table and leaned his weight on it. "The cook is forty-nine million years old," he said. "Someday he'll fall into the clam chowder. At the end of every season the old man says to him, 'I never want to, see you no more. You're as dead as a doornail.' And at the beginning of the next season he sends a taxicab for him. He used to cook at Burns's. The old man is in his second childhood. That's him setting up on the high stool by the bar. He ain't got no cash register, only an old wooden cash box. He sets there from ten 0' clock in the morning until closing time, to see that no waiter gets 'away with a glass of beer ." The waiter pointed his chin angrily toward the figure on the stool, diagon- ally across the room from us. The old gentlemàn was dressed in a black broad- cloth suit, such as a conservative under- taker might wear in winter. The up- per part of the vest looked very big for him, but his lower abdomen ballooned out like a spider's. On top of his head he balanced an old Panamà hat, col- ored like a meerschaum pipe. Even from there we could see how badly he needed a shave. "He's had that Panama hat for twen- ty years," the waiter grumbled. "Every spring he has it cleaned, and I think painted, and he brags to everybody he knows about It. 'See,' he says, 'the Pan- ama hat is good for another season.' He's in his second childhood. But try to take a dime off a him," the waiter said, "and he ain't in his second childhood no Y , d o" more. ou can t 0 It. The old man came down off the stool, reluctantly, like a boy sliding into a too-cold swimming pool. He shuf- fled toward our end of the room, glar- ing suspiciously over the tops of his spec- tacles. He had a long, pointed nose. Fifteen feet from our table the old man stopped and stared at us for a minute. Then he turned and went away. La- boriously he climbed up on the stool. " H · 0 h e was Just comIng over to see t ere wasn't too many customers in the place," the waiter explained. "The oth- er night they was lined up two deep at the bar, for once, so he says to the bar- tender, 'Come out from behind that bar, Joe, and take a walk around the block until they clear out of here.' He don't like no customers. It's second childhood. Do you know what wor- ries him the most? The fear that some- body would park at the curb here. He hates automobiles. So he puts a step- ladder in front of the curb and a pot of green paint on top of it. So anybody that drives in will knock the ladder over and get paint on his car. 'Oh, he-he-he,' the old man laughs the last time that hap- pens. 'Look at the damn fool! Too bad he didn't get it on his clothes,' the old man says." The dining room opens on to a porch, on a level with the side- walk. We looked out and saw the lad- der, with the paint pot perched on the top step. Another waiter, even older than ours, who was pretty old himself, edged lip to our man. "I don't like to say nothing, Murph," he said, "but them people over at that table over there says they give you their order half an hour ago." "Tell them it's a two-mile walk to the kitchen and back," said our waiter. The people, two men and two women, had been watching him right along, and knew he had not been to the kitchen. When they saw he was not going to do anything about it, they got up and left. "Deaf as a post the old man is," the' waiter went on. "You should hear him talk on the telephone with his sister that lives at the Plaza. 'I'm fine,' he yells as soon as he þicks up the phone. He thinks she's askin him how he is. '-' No matter what the hell she calls up to talk to him about, he jÙst says, 'I'm fine,' and hangs up. But if you drop a dollar bIll on the floor, he hears it hit." . Perhaps the old man sensed that we were talking about him. Hesitantly, he got down off his stool again and walked over toward us, then stopped, irresolute, at the same point as before, and turned and went back. "It's on account of him that the Beach is going to hell," said our waiter. "He owns an the property for a mile around and he won't put a coat of f'aint on abuilding. Last year four blocks of his stuff burnt up, the damned old tinderboxes. 'It don't do me no good anyway,' he says. 'I couldn't get no insurance on them.' The papers says, '$500,000 Fire at the Beach,' but he couldn't get five cents for them build- o " Ings. "Why does he keep the place open if he doesn't want any customers?" my girl asked. "So he can lose money and take it off his income tax," Murph told her. "And now for God's sakes don't order no pie à la mode like the last time, for I have to walk down to one end of the old shack for the pie and then I have to walk to the other end to the Icehouse for the ice cream. Be fore you can get an order together in this place, you got to get a letter from the Pope. And then before you can find a dish to serve it in, you got to go through all that heap of old tinware, like. a junk shop." My girl meekly ordered watermelon, but Murph did not start to get it.. He felt like talking. "Before his wife died sixteen years . , b d " h O d " s ago, It wasn t so a, e sal. ome- times she would buy 3 round of drinks for the house. She was always soused Twenty-four seasons I've worked here, God help me, and now it's too late to get fired. He'll die next winter '-- surely." -A. J. LIEBLING . THE, PUPPE, T FLESH The activity of the puppet flesh demands So many strings, so easily snarled and torn, Small wonder that an arm is sometimes worn . Limp at the side; that misdirected hands Reach for the wrong thing, lips with faulty word Betray the utterance of the flesh's thought, The feet go wandering where no human ought, The ears accept what never should be heard. Will you remember, when I aID confused, And wisdom, tenderness, and trust seem turned To stone, and to the eyes wherein love burned Impatience comes, that" strung flesh, little used To the audience joy, may, in its anxious fear, Confound the intentions of the puppeteer? -RAYMOND HOLDEN